This invention relates to an artificial frond for use with artificial plants, and more particularly, to an artificial palm frond for use with artificial palm trees.
Artificial palm trees are customarily employed both indoors for creating a tropical effect, and outdoors for ornamenting lawns, boulevards, parkways, park grounds, and the like. In constructing such artificial trees, the artificial fronds are typically individually fabricated and then appropriately anchored to the trunk portion of the tree. The fabrication of artificial palm fronds in the size and shape duplicating the appearance of their natural counterparts and with the structural integrity sufficient to withstand the natural forces encountered in outdoor use, has generally been an arduous and time-consuming task.
Previous techniques for fabricating artificial fronds have generally relied upon adhesive or mechanical attachment of the leaf portions of the frond to a supporting rod or stem member. This has usually required each individual leaf to be separately formed and separately secured at its lower end to the stem member. Reduction in the number of individual parts required for assembly has previously been achieved by cutting a flexible sheet of fabric or the like along approximately parallel lines which extend a substantial part of the distance across the sheet so as to define a large number of petal or leaf portions integral at one end with a connecting strip. The connecting strip is then wrapped about a stem member of wire or the like and secured thereto by a malleable wire wrapping so that the petal or leaf portions are arrayed about and extend from the supporting stem member.
While artificial palm fronds have previously been constructed by techniques similar to those described above, such palm fronds have generally been limited to the type whose leaves extend outwardly from the stem portion in a feather-like arrangement. When attempting to fabricate artificial palm fronds of the type whose leaves extend outwardly from the stem portion in a fan-like arrangement, maintaining the structural integrity of the frond, particularly for outdoor use, becomes much more serious of a problem. The areas of particular concern are in providing sufficient structural support for the more concentrated mass at the inner region of the fan-like leaf arrangement, and in providing sufficient elasticity and tear resistance for the thinner sectioned outer region thereof.
The present invention overcomes many of the disadvantages of the artificial frond fabrication techniques described above by providing an artificial frond construction capable of being easily molded in one piece with sufficient structural integrity to accommodate the requirements of artificial palm fronds with a fan-like type of leaf arrangement.